That is absolutely not how my Matty sleeps. He clings to me when we sleep, and he sprawls in the bed. He doesn’t tuck himself into a nice neat line like that. Which makes me think it’s a trap. So I continue crawling, trying to decide what to do.
The scent of food draws me toward another room. I crawl into the ducts there and peer down. A guard is there, helmet on head, pushing a button on one of the dispensing machines. It smells like noodles here, and it’s so pervasive and salty that my mouth waters. I love noodles.
My stomach growls, hard.
There are two other guards sitting and eating food in the mess area, but they get up when the other guard sits down and pokes at their noodles with a set of sticks. Okay. My target is alone. If I’m going to take this guard out, I need to do so while their peripheral vision is compromised by the boxy-looking helmet and hope that they don’t have a rear-facing vid feed on it. I scan the room quickly. There’s a row of cabinets underneath the dispensers, a sink, an attached lavatory behind a door, and a couple of small tables set up in the room. It’s very much like the mess we had back on the Buoyant Star.
If I’m going to take a chance, now is the time to do so.
I quietly push on the grate with my hand, my teeth clenching on the blaster I’ve been biting on for what feels like forever. The grate doesn’t budge, so I slip a finger through the metal lattice and look for the latches that hold it in place. Once I move them, I ease the grate down and free an arm. I aim my blaster for the vid recorder in the corner of the room and fire, so no one can see what happens next.
The guard looks up at it in surprise.
I wriggle forward, until gravity takes over and I spill out onto the floor below. I manage to roll mid-air and slide across the tile toward the startled guard. The enemy barely gets to his feet before I stand up, grab him, and wrench his head.
With a satisfying pop and crunch of bone, he collapses to the ground.
I sigh in relief, stretching my arms and legs. I want to relax, but there’s no time. I need this guard’s helmet and clothing. It’ll be easier to move around the station if I’m dressed like everyone else. So I finish stretching my limbs, then reach down and grab the helmet, pulling it off.
Ruth’s face stares up at me.
A horrified whimper leaks out of me.
No.
My sister.
I know it’s not her. I know it’s not. But it is and it isn’t, and I can’t help but feel like a murderer. I clutch the helmet in my hands, and I realize all the guards here might be clones. They might all be Ruth…and they’re standing in the way of me saving my mate.
I have to make a choice.
Something crumples deep inside me.
Sucking in a deep breath, I push back all of my emotions into that scared space, the space that’s afraid of tight areas, the space that I won’t let myself think about. I shove everything back there until my belly is cold and my mind is easy. There’s no Ruth. There’s no clones. There’s no objective at all.
Nothing exists outside of getting to Mathiras any way possible.
With utter focus, I put on the helmet.
CHAPTER 92
HELEN
They fall too easily.
I move through the ship with ease, strolling down one hall with my blaster in hand, wearing the stolen uniform and helmet. The Ruth-clone’s naked body is stuffed into a bathroom stall, and while a small part of my consciousness is amused and horrified that I’ve come full circle on dead bodies in bathrooms, the cold, merciless part of my brain has no time for such nonsense. I head directly for two of the guards in the hall.
“Where is the mesakkah?” I ask, my voice pleasant.
They ignore me, staring straight ahead. I lift my blaster, point it at the neck of the first guard, and shoot. Then I move to the next guard and shoot them before they can pull their blaster out. I pick up the weapons and pull the cartridges out, disabling them, and then step over the bodies.
Nothing matters but the mission.
Nothing.
There’s a roaring in my head that drowns out the sound of an alarm going off. My stealth has been compromised. I consider this for a moment and then decide I don’t care. They won’t kill me. If they wanted me dead, they would have smoked me out of the air ducts with a few well-placed poison clouds. They must need me alive before they slice up my brain.
That gives me the advantage.